
Erasing a CD-RW or DVD-RW disc
Before you can reuse a CD-RW or DVD-RW disc, you must erase it. You can use Disk Utility to erase CD-RW and DVD-RW discs.
When you erase the disc, you can select Quick Erase. If you do, Disk Utility prepares the disc so that you can write over the existing data but it doesn't actually erase the data. If you don't select Quick Erase, Disk Utility overwrites the entire disc with zeros, which takes longer.
- Insert the disc in the optical drive of your computer.
- Open Disk Utility, located in Applications/Utilities.
- Select the disc in the column on the left and click Erase.
- Select Quick Erase if you don't want to overwrite the old contents with zeros.
- Click Erase.
Some types of CD and DVD discs may become unusable after you erase them several times. Check the information that came with the disc to find out how many times you can erase it.